menu

noun

A list of the dishes to be served or available for a meal.

The dishes served or available at a meal.

A list of available options, especially as displayed on a screen.

Origin of menu

French small, minute, menufrom Old French menutsmallfrom Latin minūtuspast participle ofminuereto diminish ; see mei-2 in Indo-European roots.Word History: Menu can be traced back to the Latin word minūtus, meaning “small in size, amount, or degree” and also “possessing or involving minute knowledge.” Latin minūtus became Old French menut and Modern French menu, “small, fine, trifling, minute.” The French adjective came to be used as a noun with the senses “detail, details collectively,” and “detailed list.” As such, it was used in the phrase menu de repas, “list of items of a meal,” which then was shortened to just menu. The French word was then borrowed into English in the 1800s.

(computing) A list from which the user may select an operation to be performed, often done with a mouse or other pointing device under a graphical user interface, but usually also controllable from the keyboard.

menu - Computer Definition

An on-screen list of available actions a user can perform in a software program. Menu titles may appear as text, icons or both, and selection is made by clicking or tapping the title and selecting from the list.
The Disappearing Menu
In order to keep making software "slicker," many applications today eliminate the familiar row of menu items that were common years ago. The user has to click an icon to display a hidden menu and then make a selection. See menu bar, menu pane, pull-down menu and Lotus menu.

Menu Icons

Increasingly, menus appear as icons that have to be clicked or tapped to view a list of options. These examples are from the Chrome Web browser on a Mac (top) and Android Galaxy Note II smartphone (bottom). Dashes and dots are common menu graphics.

Sentence Examples

Our only concerns are the Canon menu system, which is just too esoteric for our liking.

In addition to the standard searches used by competitors in finding a particular film poster, this one also has a pull-down menu that allows you to access material by era (i.e., pre 1940's) as well as by the price range you'd like to pay.

I better start planning my menu, only four days left.

He slapped his menu closed.

There were pictures on her mantle of the two of them together when he was younger, toys piled into a box near her couch, a school lunch menu and more pictures -- these apparently from past Halloweens --on the bulletin board on one wall of the kitchen.